Thursday, August 27, 2015

The Loophole

Predictably, in the wake of the recent dual homicides here on the shores of Smith Mountain Lake where I live, the strident screeds for gun control are ringing throughout the mainstream media courtesy of All The Usual Suspects paddling around the political cesspool.

Emotions are funny, volatile things, difficult to control under the best of circumstances. It’s human nature to lash out illogically, unreasonably at an inanimate object that facilitated the excruciating and painful loss of a loved one, in this case a gun. At least Alison Parker’s father has that excuse to explain his comments about “shaming legislators into doing something about closing loopholes and background checks.”

All the usual anti-gunners are using the tragedy to grab sensational self-slobbering headlines: Obama, Hillary and our esteemed Virginia Governor, former Clinton shill, Terry McAuliffe and the rest of the opportunistic political class of congenital hypocrites.

It’s true: I’ve heard this song before; it’s from an old familiar score… that, for liberals and others similarly deranged, a still unsettled score: disarming the American public despite inconvenient things like the Bill of Rights, Natural Law, The Rule of Law, even mildly oblique precedents from SCOTUS.

Damn their “Ayes”!

But rather than add another exercise in logic, an over-researched, over-footnoted, over-arching piece, resplendently redundant with credibly published facts and figures debunking the bull again, let’s take that bull by the tail and face directly the source of a rhetorically effective byword littering the media: Loophole.

Certainly you’ve heard or read it all before: “we must close the gun show loophole… “…domestic violence loophole”… “…mentally deranged loophole”…people taking psychotropic drugs looph.. “ (forget that last one; never happened, never will but for different reasons).

Just what is a “loophole”? Where do they come from? If there is a “loophole” in the law, how did it get there? No one knows! According to the Blowdried Set (see National TV News Anchors) and other selected punditry, there are “tax loopholes” for the greedy rich, “regulatory loopholes” for the greedy producers, even “Welfare and Social Security loopholes” for those sufficiently clever and motivated to game the system.

Webster’s says a loophole is: “an ambiguity or inadequacy in the law or a set of rules”. Wait! What? Aren’t the geniuses who write legislation smart enough to eliminate this never ending supply of “loopholes”? Apparently not. Hey! Maybe loopholes aren’t born of ignorance or accident at all! Maybe loopholes are as intentional as the law or regulation itself, specifically designed to punish most - but not all!

If loopholes are mistakes, the Logic Free Zone of Washington, DC and every State capital should be a ghost town tomorrow due to the epidemic of terminal incompetence. If loopholes are a special and intentional creation, it must take an awful lot of work and a pile of evil. All things considered (Government + Politicians), I vote for the latter.

Beyond the basics – “You can’t hit people and you can’t steal their stuff”. (P.J. O’Rourke) -every law and every regulation is one more termite gorging itself on a corner of our freedom and liberty to live our lives freely in the pursuit of happiness.

The entity we call “Government” and the people who operate it - whether elected, appointed or hired -do not spend their time concocting ways and means to preserve and protect Freedom and Liberty. No, they labor diligently, blatantly, in front of C-SPAN cameras and consistently in the legendary ”smoke-filled back rooms ”inside the capital’s labyrinths, to eradicate it. Benignly, we are told they are working to “keep us safe”.

From the violent violations of the 4th Amendment to the astonishingly arrogant incompetence of the EPA, how’s exactly is that working out?

To the sociopaths and their myrmidons in government, Liberty is a loophole. Freedom is a loophole. Natural Rights are loopholes, all of which must be eliminated, slammed shut quickly, thoroughly and when necessary, inhumanely. And they will be. Because at no time in all of mankind’s recorded history has government -any government -served any other ultimate purpose than enslavement of its subjects, no matter how benevolent and benign its beginnings.

Not knowing his political philosophy, at least in the apoplexy of his justifiable rage and grief at the murder of his daughter, Mr. Parker’s comments can be understood. Hopefully, in calmer times, he will learn and appreciate the folly of his stated mission “to do something about crazy people getting guns” by “shaming legislators into doing something about closing loopholes and background checks.” Hopefully, he will understand violent crime requires nothing more than a fist; that everything else is just a tool to make the violence more efficient and lethal. But the crime starts and ends with the criminal. Not the tool he uses. Hopefully, he will come to appreciate that “shaming legislators” never produces “good laws”. Hopefully, he will see that more intrusive incursions to preemptively punish anticipated aberrant behavior would bring “Minority Report” from the silver screen into a way of life.

More accurately: a way of existence.

Hopefully, Mr. Parker will come to realize all of this and he will speak accordingly to relatives, friends, even media audiences. There is no hope “elected leaders” will ever achieve that level of honesty.